Dev Diary #3: Perfect vs. Hidden Misinformation in Board Games

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Introduction

Hi all! Chris here again with another blog post digging into some of the game design decisions of Loot the World. This one is going to be based on a section of mathematics called Information Theory and how that, along with an understanding of the human psyche and Decision Theory, informed our game design process for our flagship board game Loot the World (coming to Kickstarter in 2026!).

To begin with, let’s start with the topic of Perfect Information. Simply put, this is the idea that all members of a group or players in a game have all the same total information of the state of things. It would be like if Settlers of Catan were played with all Development Cards being shared and all held resource cards being known. A good game with Perfect Information would be, in my opinion, Machi Koro 2. Everyone can see what buildings each player owns and how much money each player has. Any game which has Perfect Information is a game where the strategy is about playing against the other players rather than attempting to get a leg up using some hidden strategies.

Perfect Info, Imperfect Info, Asymmetric Info, etc.

Loot the World doesn’t have Perfect Information. Instead, it has what is so appropriately called Imperfect Information and, to some degree, Asymmetric Information. Looking strictly at the board state and what is on the table, players can more easily predict and see who is in the lead, who is a threat and what actions a player might make -- should they do ‘a’ or ‘b’. Further, because we have the turn order change in a completely predictable way via a mechanic called ‘Progressive Turn Order’, the actions of a player can be more easily predicted simply by where they are in the turn order. A player who is Second or Third might be more aggressive with their actions than the First player.

Now, add to this Loot the World’s ‘Hurt the Leader’ cards like Plot Twists (examples below), and you can imagine how this dramatically shifts gameplay. Plot Twists, at their base element, only really hurt players who are doing well. So, if a player in first place is holding onto Plot Twists, you can almost count those cards as not being considered for any action they may make! Further, because a player realistically only has 2 unique actions at any given time, you can still more or less predict what a player might do to win, given how much territory they control and/or how much gold they have. 

Even adding in our Rare Resources mini-expansion, designed to make the game slightly more complex for strategy game connoisseurs, the information available to players is still not as asymmetrical as some other games with a much larger pool of hidden information. Because you can make assumptions about how a player is playing (e.g. if they’re being a greedy, gold-hoarding goblin or a big bad bully with a large army), you can make some confident assumptions about what they may be holding and how they might want to play.

Is There a ‘Best Action’?

In Game Design and in testing, there comes a point where a Beta Tester might start asking or discovering if there is a ‘Best Action’ for every state of the board. This is a complicated question and is something that you must consider whenever you design a Tabletop or Video Game. You never really want a defined ‘Meta’ strategy or a defined ‘Best’ Action whenever possible (as Lloyd mentioned in this dev diary entry) and we do our best to absolutely avoid this in our game design. But, because of Decision Theory and the complicated maths that exists, this an inherently a Sisyphean Task (i.e. a task that can never truly be 100% completed); almost all games will have a ‘Best Action’ at some stage of the game. The way you can avoid that is by leaning into the Human Psyche and making some base assumptions about humans are.

In Loot the World, our assumption was simple. Board games can make us selfish and greedy, and this results in us almost never being able to make the best possible action all the time; especially if that action is one that harms oneself. Look at the Prisoner’s Dilemma, one of the most well known and probably most misquoted Game Theory problems. Basically, you take two rational individuals and place them in separate rooms where they decide to either stay quiet or betray their companion. If both stay quiet (i.e. stick to their guns/benefit the collective), the punishment is marginal. If one stays quiet while the other talks, the one who talks gets no punishment. If both talk, the punishment is huge. And regardless of how you run this experiment, you will find that the individuals will always betray each other at the same time.

So why talk about this dilemma with Loot the World? Well… we found that a player who is always logical (i.e. someone who is always going to act in a way that will lead them to victory and prevent others from winning) is going to almost always make actions that harms themselves in the short-term. But because this action is almost antithetical to the human psyche, we know this will almost never happen. Why? Because most players will never ever make the action that hurts themselves.

Greed is Good Until it Isn’t

By knowing that greed almost always gets the better of a player, knowing that backstabbing someone just to get that edge against another player, or being a cheeky gold-hoarding goblin in the corner, we think we can ensure that players will not always make the ‘Best Action’ and instead make the most ‘Fun Action’. At the end of the day, we have a hunch Loot the World will bring out players’ self-indulgence, so what better game is there to play than one where you take control of a Victorian era trading company that historically did exactly that?

Hope you enjoyed the read,
Chris